Action Doom: Rampage Edition

[Scuba Steve]

 

Bigger, harder and faster—Action Doom is back and better than ever! The original run-and-gun Doom mod which ushered in the era of ‘Big Budget Doom’ has been remastered for 2022 taking full advantage of the last 20 years of GZDoom features. The testimonials are in; here’s what people are saying about Action Doom:

 

“78th greatest map of all time” - @Xaser

“There was nothing subtle about any of it, but the absurdity was the whole point.” - @NotJabba

“I had an Action Doom 1 sticker on my school diary when I went to middle school.” - @Dynamo

 

If you have been living under a rock for the past twenty years, or were born after 2004, don’t miss your chance to play the seminal work that inspired a generation. For the rest of you, welcome back! It’s time… for ACTION!

 

Features

• Dehacked to the future – Forget exe hacks of the past, Action Doom has been completely rewritten using ZDoom’s modern decorate features.
• Get a life – Unshackled by Dehacked, Action Doom: Rampage Edition now boasts a fully realized life system complete with iframes, safety grenades, and Contra-style weapon slots. Don’t expect a reprieve on the hardest setting, however!
• Level up! – Using GZDoom’s advanced features, every map has been reworked to look and play better.
• Up your arsenal – Lay waste to swarms of Alien Demon hybrids with an entirely new arsenal that takes advantage of GZDoom’s advanced features; Explode, burn and perforate your enemies with rocket launchers, flame throwers and the all new shotgun.
• Wide load – Action Doom: Rampage Edition is now widescreen compatible.

 

Download

Action Doom: Rampage Edition requires a commercial copy of Doom 2. Unpack the zip file and drag the action.pk3 file onto the most recent version of GZDoom.

• Download from the idgames archive
• Download Action Doom

 

Credits

• kevansevans: Programming & Zscript. Wrote the HUD, weapons, grenade and health code. Cleaned up level errors and messy scripts.
• Mike "Cyb" Watson: ZDoom scripting. Responsible for the majority of the code from the original 1.0 release.
• Kara "Nanami" Rader: Early scripting work.
• Julian "Julian" Aubourg: Original music
• Andrew "Linguica" Stine: Doom Racer

 

Screenshots

Spoiler

[kevansevans]

Glad to have been on board to help with this! Excited to see this finally let loose!

[LexiMax]

Don't forget these Action Protips:

 

[Scuba Steve]

254,354

[LateToDOOM2020]

This looks great I cant wait to try it out!

[Edward850]

You call this Rampage Edition, and yet I can't play as a baron. I've been cheated and lied to.

[Ralphis]

New contest please. I need a new shirt.

[Devalaous]

2 hours ago, Edward850 said:

You call this Rampage Edition, and yet I can't play as a baron. I've been cheated and lied to.

 

That would actually be a pretty funny unlockable

[ChopBlock223]

Handheld Cacodemon as a weapon or we riot!

[esselfortium]

Awesome, congrats on the release! Looking forward to giving this a playthrough again soon.

[Marisa the Magician]

Well, well... Now this is a special surprise.

[Noiser]

[kevansevans]

I should also try to reach out here. One of the longer outstanding bugs was getting the zscript hud to work universally across all players and settings, which I personally found incredibly difficult, and Steve is still looking for someone who can shed some light on a potential fix. If anyone is willing to help out in these regards, please contact me or Steve.

 

For anyone wanting a more immediate fix, you can open up the wad in Slade (or open the wad like a zip), navigate to ActionStatusBar.txt and change the number 3 to a smaller number for a smaller hud, or a larger number for a larger hub. It accepts decimals as well.

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by Kevansevans

[QuakedoomNukem Cz]

Didn't expect this at all to happen, it's very nice to see.

Bugs:

Not really a bug, but it's weird to me, that you for the weapon slots, it doesn't use 3 and 4 respectively, instead if a weapon is on a slot 5 or 6, I need to press those keys, despite them being in the slots (a little confusing if 6 is in first slot, but 5 is in second).

The Boat is unfortunately unplayable in the current version (GZD 4.8.2, in case if GZD version is needed), as soon as I start it, it gets stuck before entering the canyon.

In the highway section, I find it a bit strange that you get the second clipboard instead of the first one (I checked an old video of the original version [VaosSA] and it was the first one) when you beat it and enter the science truck.

[Scuba Steve]

Noted for inevitable bugfix release.

[Herr Dethnout]

I will be honest, I'm kinda dissapointed because it doesn't have the artistic style of Action Doom 2, but it's great to see some love towards the first game. :P

[kevansevans]

5 hours ago, QuakedoomNukem Cz said:

Not really a bug, but it's weird to me, that you for the weapon slots, it doesn't use 3 and 4 respectively, instead if a weapon is on a slot 5 or 6, I need to press those keys, despite them being in the slots (a little confusing if 6 is in first slot, but 5 is in second).

 

Unfortunately, the latest version of GZDoom does not allow for reassigning the slots of weapons. It's been explained why to me before by a few GZDoom devs, and it's not out of the question exactly for a future update, but it'll take a lot more work than just allowing this number to be changed.

This was something I tried doing from the get-go when I got the slot system working.

[Scuba Steve]

6 hours ago, QuakedoomNukem Cz said:

The Boat is unfortunately unplayable in the current version (GZD 4.8.2, in case if GZD version is needed), as soon as I start it, it gets stuck before entering the canyon.

 

I can't replicate this, it always seems to work for me...

[Captain Ventris]

Holy SHIT an Action Doom re-release? We are getting quite spoiled this year.

[QuakedoomNukem Cz]

Here's a video of the boat bug in question. And much like the original, sometimes cash doesn't give you any points for some reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yMUsjDx4Lg

[Scuba Steve]

9 hours ago, QuakedoomNukem Cz said:

Here's a video of the boat bug in question. And much like the original, sometimes cash doesn't give you any points for some reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yMUsjDx4Lg

 

The cash bug is probably related to the old code that was used to apply points and some items were never tagged. The boat issue, however, I can't replicate. I installed a clean copy of GZDoom 4.8.2 and can't replicate it... it also works with the lasted development build. Are you running any additional addons?

[MikeyScoots]

This is the best news since sliced bread! 

[QuakedoomNukem Cz]

12 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

 

Are you running any additional addons?

Nope, nothing outside of the music addon Cap. J made.

[Captain Ventris]

Yep, this rules. Takes a good wad and puts it over the top. Really wonderful additions, they make the entire experience that much more sleek and fun!

[brick]

For some reason I had always assumed that Action Doom took place in a future long after Doom, but I just noticed small details like the rabbit on the ship at the end and the mention of the Deimos base... was it this meant to act as a prequel? or was the whole thing with Deimos more meant as a setup for an Action Doom 3?

 

Anyway I have a suggestion for the text file. Right now it mentions that the maps "render properly in GZDoom's hardware mode", but it seems more like hardware is required; the lighting clearly looks completely wrong in software (I was wondering at one point what was going, as I remembered the original release's lighting being quite good), and more seriously the game crashes during some parts (most notably during the escape sequence in MAP03) in both software modes. I'd suggest making it more explicit that the wad should only be run in hardware.

 

Nice to see both games remastered like this.

[Kes Gaming YT]

Just did a playthrough of the remaster, loved the original!

After the first boss battle, when you go into the elevator, it seems to trigger a crash, pretty consistently. The best way to avoid it seems to be to not look outside. After about4-5 attempts, I got past that though.

What was more frustrating was after the last big boss battle, when your escaping the exploding complex and you jump into a helicopter... turning around to face outside the helicopter also triggered a crash, and no matter how many times I tried, it always crashed in that spot, making further progression impossible.
 

Using GZDoom v. 4.9.0 for reference.

Edit: Also, how does one prevent the BFG from overloading and killing yourself?

[Scuba Steve]

Interesting, Those crashes do not exist in 4.8.2, the official build at the time of the release. Try running the mod with 4.8.2 and see if you encounter the same problems... I just did a test run and was able to replicate the crashes you described in 4.9.0 but not in 4.8.2.

[Kes Gaming YT]

On 11/22/2022 at 7:11 PM, Scuba Steve said:

Interesting, Those crashes do not exist in 4.8.2, the official build at the time of the release. Try running the mod with 4.8.2 and see if you encounter the same problems... I just did a test run and was able to replicate the crashes you described in 4.9.0 but not in 4.8.2.

Just tried it and I can confirm it doesn't happen on 4.8.2.

[Scuba Steve]

I have no idea what the problem is, but a bug was introduced in 4.9.0 that has since been fixed in recent dev builds.

 

https://devbuilds.drdteam.org/gzdoom/

 

Action Doom can be played without crashing in the recent build found here. (Thanks to RicardoLuis0 of the ZDoom Discord server for helping track it down.)

[Cardboard Marty]

This release totally snuck under the radar for me until I saw it mentioned in the Cacowards. Action Doom inspired me so much as an artist and a Doom modder, seeing it get this treatment is splendid. Playing through again was a blast and I had a lot of fun, the new mechanics involving invulnerability frames definitely helped the experience feel less frustrating.

 

My only feedback is regarding the...

Spoiler

new weapons

...which felt a little under-baked in functionality and feedback. I didn't find the second one but the first one located in the mining/tunnel area didn't really give off the sense that it belonged with the others in both art and functionality. I think buffing it if there are any further updates would be a good idea, maybe in both range and effectiveness, but there's an overlap already with the spreadgun that'll be hard to overcome without making it redundant. That being said, great work to everyone involved!